SSP COVID-19 Toolkit

Security and Privacy Advisories

Audience: Guidelines from advisories including but not limited to LEAs, US-Cert, DHS, CISA, NSA, FBI, SANS etc. for general public, students, municipalities, healthcare and businesses.

FBI is cautioning against the ‘Other’ Coronavirus Crisis, Cybersecurity & Privacy risks and scams. There is a lot of currents and anticipated criminal activities at an unprecedented scale as criminals devise means to prey upon the public’s fears.

According to the FBI “The speed at which criminals are devising and executing their schemes is truly breathtaking. The sheer variety of frauds already uncovered is shocking. Law enforcement has already learned of offers of sham treatments and vaccines, bogus investment opportunities in non-existent medical companies, and calls from crooks impersonating doctors demanding payment for treatments. Scammers are targeting websites and mobile apps designed to track the spread of COVID-19 and using them to implant malware to steal financial and personal data. Thieves are even posing as national and global health authorities, including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization, to conduct phishing campaigns. They send e-mails designed to trick recipients eager for reliable health information into downloading malicious code.

Identify

Detect

Protect

Respond

Recover

Privacy-Preserving Contact Tracing

Apple and Google COVID19 partnership - releases exposure notifications for Bluetooth, Cryptography, Framework API, and FAQ.

Top Email Protections Fail in Latest COVID-19 Phishing Campaign

Identify

Advisories aim to identify the sources of potential cyberattacks. It may include attacks on personal laptops, smartphones, tablets, printers, scanners, and point-of-sale devices.

During the pandemic, there’s specific attention given to video calling software (such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Skype, Cisco WebEx etc.). A subtle surge of robocalls are also observed.

Advance Fee and BEC Schemes

FBI Warns of Advance Fee and BEC Schemes Related to Procurement of PPE and Other Supplies During COVID-19 Pandemic

Viral Marketing Counterfits

Informs about counterfeits such as substandard food items, pharmaceutical products etc.

Public awareness and prevention

Europol's gives potential attack vectors likely to be used in tricking users

Tracking the Global Response to COVID-19

Privacy International's tracking the examples of abuse through wide range of selection of Actors, Issue and Technology

Protect

Advisories reach out to us on formal policies and securing our digital devices; network; personal accounts, banking accounts, business accounts. Organizations including Google, Cisco, Microsoft, Apple etc. release the latest and urgent patches.

Google announces the release of cloud-based zero trust solution for remote workers that eliminates need for VPN’s.

CISA and NCSC Joint Alert on Pharmaceutical and Research Organizations and their Mitigation Strategies

CISA and NCSC Joint Alert on APTs, Phishing and their Mitigation Strategies

Zoom Security Tips especially against Zoom Bombing

Technical Approaches to Uncovering and Remediating Malicious Activity

The joint DHS CISA alert highlights the best practice methods for incident detection and remediation of malicious cyber activity, including mitigation steps and indicators of compromise.

The realities of ransomware: Five signs you’re about to be attacked

Detect

Advisories help us in providing guidelines for detecting potential cyberattacks on digital devices.

Federal Trade Commission's increased measures against Robocalls

Fake Coronavirus Interactive Map Alert

Health Sector Cybersecurity Coordination Center (HC3) releases "Fake Online Coronavirus Map Delivers Well-known Malware"

Real World Case Study: Best practices for detecting and mitigating email-based phishing attacks

2020 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report

Respond

Advisories help us in providing guidelines for detecting potential cyberattacks on digital devices.

10 Most Exploited Vulnerabilities 2016–2019

“FBI and CISA released a joint product listing the top ten most frequently exploited technical vulnerabilities along with their Mitigation measures. Why does this matter?

Telework Guidance and Resources

CISA has launched a product line to provide best practices and resources for telework. This includes cybersecurity recommendations for using video teleconference tools and services

Because organizations spend unbelievable sums of money on new defensive technologies, but often leave the side door open. The most sophisticated actors won’t deploy their most trusted tools when they can identify rudimentary weaknesses in your infrastructure.
We do incident response 365 days a year, and when we see these vulnerabilities exploited, it’s incumbent upon us to let you know. These CVEs go back to 2017, meaning we must do a better job at automating our patching validation and deployment process.”

Recover

Repairing and restoring procedures fall under this category. Advisories give us formal procedures to combat the aftermath of cyberattacks.

A guide to helping businesses in the process of reopening

Ready to Reopen: A Playbook for Your Small Business